“No further questions.”
The Prosecuting Officer leaped up to cross-examine. “Dr Lavalle, is the damage also not consistent with another explanation? Could not the defendant have been seeking to provide some sort of spurious justification for his misappropriation of the cargo? Could not the defendant have deliberately brought about this damage himself?”
“Yes, sir, he could have.”
Dan’s whole body tensed.
Lavalle paused slightly, smiling amiably at the Prosecuting Officer. “He could have – if he went space-walking for a week with a hammer, a can-opener, and a welding torch.”
Dan relaxed. The court erupted into laughter and the judge slapped the desk for order. The Prosecuting Officer’s lips tightened and he sat down.
Next, Conor called Dr Rosalind Mayer from Mission Planning. From the dealings he’d had with her in the run-up to launch, Dan had formed a good impression of Ros. She wasn’t in Hal’s league but she was highly professional and he certainly had no complaints about the way she’d kept him posted. She wore a dark tunic-suit rather than a uniform and took the stand looking composed and business-like.
“Dr Mayer,” Conor began. “Your company, SpaceFreight, was contracted to deliver a cargo to a destination in Saturn orbit. Could you state for the Court what role you played in that enterprise?”
“I was the Director of Mission Planning.”
“And did the calculation of the flight path form part of your team’s responsibilities?”
“Oh yes. We spent a lot of time on it.”
“Now Dr Mayer, did you, or any member of your team, ever deal with a flight path for this mission that involved an unavoidable collision with two large asteroids?”
“Yes, we did.”
Dan sensed a stir in the audience behind him.
“Would you like to elaborate on that?”
“Certainly. Flight planning is a complex task. Basically the idea is to develop a trajectory that takes account of the gravitational pull of all the relevant bodies while minimizing the fuel cost. Most of the time we’re not dealing with anything as far out as the asteroid belt. In this case we were, so we tackled it in stages. The first stage was to prepare the flight path as if the asteroid belt wasn’t there. Then we superimposed the latest asteroid map and looked to see if there was a problem.”
“And was there a problem?”
“You bet. We had a collision course with two big asteroids.”
Dan heard a collective intake of breath behind him.
“So what happened next, Doctor?”
“We adjusted the course in various ways. It’s not a straightforward optimization; some judgment is called for.”
“I see. And did you achieve a flight path that avoided the asteroids?”
“Yes, we did.”
“What happened then, Doctor?”
“We placed it on the secure servers and notified the Mission Overview Office so they could approve it. They did, and we stored it together with all the other data and programs ready for uploading to the computer system on board the freighter.”
“So the flight path that was approved by the defendant did not pass through two asteroids.”
“Absolutely not. And we would never have submitted one that did.”
“Dr Mayer, the original flight path – the one that collided with the asteroids – was that discarded, or was that stored as well?”
“It’s normal to store all the flight paths. They’re not part of the upload, of course. It’s just that at some stage someone may decide they want to change the priorities. If they do we’ve got the alternate solutions, or we can go back to the original if necessary and start again.”
“Now, Doctor, how difficult would it be for someone to substitute that collision course for the one your team and the Mission Overview Office approved?”
“Objection! Counsel is trying to cover up the defendant’s incompetence. There’s no evidence for what he’s suggesting, none whatever.”
The judge looked at Conor over his glasses.
“Mr O’Gorman?”
“Your honour, I find it difficult to believe that this disastrous flight path was designed and approved not only by the defendant but by Dr Mayer and her highly experienced Mission Planning Team. I am trying to seek an alternative explanation for what happened.”
“All the same, this line of questioning is highly speculative. Unless you intend to present evidence to back it up, I must rule that the objection be carried.”
“Very well, your honour. I have no further questions for this witness.”
Conor’s achieved what he wanted to, Dan thought. He’s put the idea in people’s minds.
“You may stand down, Dr Mayer. Counsel will call his next witness.”
“I call Mr Karl Stott.”
59
As Karl Stott mounted the stand Dan took the opportunity of a closer look at him. Stott seemed much older than his years. His short blond hair was greying, his eyes were dull, and his face was pallid and puffy. He was heavily overweight, and he sat down ponderously.
“Mr Stott, you are a Director of SpaceFreight Incorporated?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you were present when the decision not to arm the Spacefreighter Solar Wind was taken?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say that decision was taken on expert advice?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Can you say what the source of that advice was?”
“I advised the Board on the matter. I am a former graduate of Space Fleet Academy and my f… er… I am familiar with this field of operations. I was in a good position to advise them.”
“You were aware of Captain Larssen’s concerns.”
“He’d put those concerns in a letter to the Board, yes.”
“But you discounted them?”
Stott seemed to be having difficulty controlling a tic in one cheek.
“There wasn’t a shred of evidence for what he was saying. It was pure speculation. Not a case that the Board would be justified in taking seriously. Certainly not sufficient for us to delay the launch while we applied to the International Convention for an exemption. All this talk of pirates – we’d have been a laughing stock.”
Conor nodded, seemingly absorbing the information. “Now, Mr Stott, you have heard the defendant’s account of the pirate attack, how he used missiles from the cargo to repel that attack, and how he sustained shell damage to his own craft in the process. In view of what you have heard, would you say – with hindsight – that the defendant had been right to ask for the ship to be armed, and that you had been wrong to advise against it?”
“Not at all. I don’t believe his account for one moment. There’s no evidence for this alleged attack. The shell damage could easily have been simulated.”
“And the asteroid encounter?”
“Again there’s no evidence that such an encounter took place. He could have sustained that damage flying through a field of small asteroids. It would be careless, of course, to maintain such a flight path, but you’ve already heard that he wasn’t particularly attentive in that regard.”
“So what is your own explanation for the absence of sixteen torpedoes from the manifest, Mr Stott?”
“Well he could have fired them just for the hell of it. Perhaps he did some target practice in the asteroid belt. Or maybe a shuttle came out to relieve him of them. One of his former associates, maybe?” He smiled crookedly.
Dan sat forward. That’s outrageous! Why doesn’t Conor hit that on the head straight away?
To his surprise, Conor remained calm and respectful and pursued it further.
“That’s an interesting idea, Mr Stott. No one seems to have suggested it before. Would you like to enlarge on it a little?”
“Well these crime syndicates need weapons, don’t they? Who’s to say they didn’t set it up beforehand? It would be worth their while to send out a couple of shuttles to pick up sixteen torpedoes.
Could have happened anywhere, just outside Earth orbit even.”
“There weren’t any torpedo launchers missing from the ship though, Mr Stott.”
“No, well, perhaps they had launchers that would work with those torpedoes or maybe they could modify them.”
Dan heard a murmur of conversation behind him. Turning slightly he could see some of the directors muttering to one another. He recognized Dr Trebus among them and the man’s face was deeply troubled. He could see what Conor was doing: establishing Stott’s antipathy, letting him dig an ever deeper hole for himself.
“The launchers on the ship had been fired, though. How do you explain that?”
Evidently Stott had heard the rumblings too. “I don’t know, it could have been faked. Look, I’m not saying this is what happened. I’m just saying there are other explanations for what went missing, aside from these legendary pirates.”
“Mr Stott, did you know the defendant prior to his employment by the company?”
“Yes. He was in my year at the Space Fleet Academy until he was thrown out.”
“And were you friends at that time?”
“No, we weren’t friends. I thought he was a bit of a wild card. I still do.”
Dan wondered if Conor was going to bring up Stott’s involvement in his expulsion from the Academy, but he skirted round it.
“So in your view, Mr Stott, the company was wrong to employ the defendant in the first place?”
“Yes. But it’s not for me to interfere in the appointment of staff. That’s the responsibility of our personnel people.”
“Of course. Now, Mr Stott, in view of what you have said about your training and experience you will be familiar with the computer systems on board this freighter.”
“Yes, I am qualified both as a pilot and an engineer. That falls well within my expertise.”
“I have to admit that I myself am completely unacquainted with that side of things. So I wonder if, as an expert, you can help me to understand something?”
You canny bugger, Conor. If I were on the stand now I’d have every antenna vibrating. But Stott’s preening himself with all this talk of being an expert. He just can’t see it coming.
“We’ve heard mention here today of memory banks on the ship’s computer. Now what would they normally be used to store?”
Stott seemed comfortable with the question. He leaned forward in the witness stand, his hands together in didactic mode.
“Well, you see, they’d carry the specifications of the ship, the whole of the flight plan, maps for navigation, the cargo inventory, all that sort of thing.”
“I see. And would they be added to during the course of the flight?”
“Yes. The flight logs would be kept up to date, so they would record the durations of burn of the propulsion units, any course corrections and why they were made, communications—”
“Ah, so they would have recorded any communications with these, er, pirate ships?”
“If there’d been any, yes.”
“That would be important evidence, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“So why did you wipe the memory banks, Mr Stott?”
There was a chorus of gasps from the audience.
Dan smiled grimly. Bang. He’s pulled the rug.
Stott straightened up, his pallid countenance now completely white.
“Er… standard practice.”
“It’s standard practice to erase the entire record of an epic journey to Saturn and back, a journey that, as we can see, has some highly controversial aspects?”
“Yes. The cargo inventory included weap… er, explosive devices, complete with operational procedures and specifications. Highly classified information. It had to be erased.”
“And is it normal, Mr Stott, for that to be done by a Director of the Company?”
Stott was starting to sweat. The tic became worse. “Well, this was a very unusual mission. Highly unusual. I wanted to be sure, personally, there’d be no breach of security on this issue. I’m an expert in these matters, so I did it myself. You know, to be sure it was done properly.”
“You were acting responsibly.”
“Yes, that’s it, responsibly.”
“And it was necessary to wipe everything: course corrections, communications, the entire record of the flight, just to erase the classified information?”
“Yes. It isn’t enough just to erase the directory. You have to reinitialize the memory banks to be sure that no one can access the information again.”
“So that’s what you did? You initialized the memory banks and erased all trace of the flight records?”
“Yes.”
Conor nodded slowly, then deliberately turned his back on Stott to face the court.
“Well now, Mr Stott,” he said, still addressing the witness behind him. “Would it surprise you to learn that, despite your heroic efforts, a copy of the flight record in those memory banks has, in fact, survived?”
60
There was a tumult of excited conversation in the court room. Stott’s eyes opened wide. His jaw had gone slack. He licked his lips.
“Yes, ladies and gentleman,” Conor continued loudly, and the conversation died to an expectant hush. “A copy does exist. The court has no record of the flight because, as you have heard, Mr Stott was most careful to erase the ship’s memory banks. But the defendant took the precaution, when he was at Station Saturn, of downloading the memory banks onto these.” He produced three black plastic squares from his pocket, holding them up with a theatrical flourish. “There is, on these memory tiles, a complete record of the outgoing journey. And with your permission, your Honour, I would like to show the court some excerpts.”
“Your Honour,” yelled a startled Prosecuting Officer. “May we approach the bench?”
There followed a subdued but nonetheless furious exchange at the bench, interpolated with the judge’s low, measured tones. Stott took the opportunity of wiping his face with a handkerchief. Enclosed there in the witness stand he resembled nothing so much as a great, trapped animal. Eventually the Prosecuting Officer returned to his seat and the judge pronounced his ruling.
“I must remind the court that this evidence will need to be checked by experts to verify that it does, in fact, represent a valid record of the outgoing flight of Spacefreighter Solar Wind. I have reprimanded the Counsel for the Defence for failing to reveal this evidence to the Prosecuting Officer. However, there is some suggestion here that material evidence has been tampered with, in view of which I am willing for Counsel for the Defence to proceed.”
So saying, the judge rose, made a crisp signal to the Clerk of the Court, and moved from behind the bench to a suitable viewing position in the front row. The Clerk came forward, moved the judge’s papers carefully to one side and operated a switch that rotated the central section of the bench, bringing up a console. The lighting in the court room dimmed and at the same time the illusory appearance of wood panelling on the wall behind the bench dissolved to white. Conor quickly selected one of the memory tiles and inserted it into the slot of a reader in the console. He tapped in an address and the full-width display screen leapt into life.
It would be immediately obvious to everyone in the courtroom that the record was genuine. The four pictures being displayed were the direct counterpart of four of the monitors on the Flight Deck. The first monitor showed all the figures for the flight path, including elapsed time, distance travelled, position and bearing in all three dimensions, attitude, speed, and details of the condition of the propulsion systems. The second monitor carried a matrix of pictures from the deep-space forward-pointing radar and the broad beam radars at the side of the ship. It was a dynamic display in the sense that detection of any new event automatically enlarged the corresponding picture at the expense of the others. The third monitor featured a radial line that swept in a circle. That was the communications scanner, constantly searching for incoming messages and ready to pin down
the frequency and mode of transmission. The fourth monitor was similar to the composite of radar pictures, except that it was operating in the visual spectrum. At the moment it was displaying the star fields that would be seen from several viewpoints: in the Observation Deck, under the living pod, and on either cargo pod. For the people in the courtroom it was as if they were seated on the Flight Deck themselves. Silence settled on them like a blanket. Every eye was riveted to the screens.
Abruptly a string of images appeared on one of the radar views and it expanded to dominate that portion of the wall screen. A moment or two later the radial line on the communication scanner retracted and in its place a series of messages began to run, to be read off in turn by the voice synthesizer:
“SPACEFREIGHTER SOLAR WIND CALLING UNIDENTIFIED CRAFT IN MARS SECTOR 27. PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELVES.”
“SOLAR WIND, YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED SECTOR. STAND BY AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.”
“NEGATIVE. SOLAR WIND IS IN NEUTRAL SPACE. IDENTIFY YOURSELVES, PLEASE.”
“REPEAT. YOU ARE IN A RESTRICTED SECTOR. STAND BY AND PREPARE FOR BOARDING.”
“REPEAT. SOLAR WIND IS IN NEUTRAL SPACE. ANY ATTEMPT TO BOARD WILL CONSTITUTE AN ACT OF PIRACY.”
“PREPARE TO BE BOARDED SOLAR WIND. ANY RESISTANCE WILL BE MET WITH FORCE. COOPERATE AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.”
The audience was mesmerized. Now the fourth monitor was showing visuals of the pirate ships approaching, the lead ship coming nearer and nearer, then the shells, the answering laser countermeasures, the torpedo, the explosion. More shells streamed out, followed by torpedoes, and more explosions. The screen was white with flame and expanding gas. The dark star-filled sky started to show through the waning clouds of gas and debris and the silhouettes of the three remaining ships came into view. Almost immediately their images moved up and out of the top of the screen. This was the moment, Dan realized, when he’d begun to roll the ship to the right. Stars and debris slid quickly from bottom to top. The picture suddenly shrank and another picture expanded, on which the silhouettes of the ships were gliding downwards. Whether or not that made sense to the audience it made sense to Dan: for the port scanners the pirate ships would be entering from the top of the picture. Shells were streaming from the ships – something Dan had been too preoccupied to notice at the time – followed by the incoming torpedo. Both the radar and visual screens recorded its last-minute deviation and detonation just short of target. Finally the two screens showed the salvo of torpedoes from Solar Wind and the series of explosions that terminated the battle.
Saturn Run (The Planetary Trilogy Book 1) Page 28
